


wouldn't touch me, touch me bad

by musical_emjay



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-18
Updated: 2011-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:12:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musical_emjay/pseuds/musical_emjay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It’s not a rush, going under, not like you’d think.</i></p><p><i>That’s the nature of dreams: that ephemeral slip-slide-shift in medias res like shrugging into an old familiar coat you’ve always worn, of course you have, you’ve been wearing it all this time, don’t you remember? It doesn’t feel like anything, really. </i></p><p><i>Coming up, now, that’s a different story.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	wouldn't touch me, touch me bad

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song Touch Me Bad by Steel Train.
> 
> I wrote this fic a year or so ago, and I'm only now putting it up on AO3, so apologies to those who've already read it! ;)

It’s not a rush, going under, not like you’d think.

That’s the nature of dreams: that ephemeral slip-slide-shift in medias res like shrugging into an old familiar coat you’ve always worn, of course you have, you’ve been wearing it all this time, don’t you remember? It doesn’t feel like anything, really.

Coming up, now, that’s a different story.

The real pros, the ones you want on your side if there’s sides to be chosen, they learn to hide it fucking quick. They lock it down, button it up, turn it into something negligible so its up out and away before the risk of being caught is even a glimmer of thought in the unfocused eye of a newly woken mark. Doesn’t mean they don’t feel it though, doesn’t mean they’re any less susceptible to that bright fizzle and surge of pure _sensation_. There’s nothing quite like coming back into your own skin, feeling yourself pulsing, stretching outwards, your body searching for all the things it knows is _real_ to tether you back to your anchor.

(Of course, it’s nothing but exceptionally stupid to trust that feeling, not when your mind knows what real things feel like too. It’s catalogued those clues, knows how to feed them back to you. A sly and dangerous thing, the mind, and you learn that or lose yourself forever.)

It takes a special kind of somebody to hide it well, though, so not even a dilated pupil or trembling hand is in evidence. Somebody who lives their entire life on lockdown, carries that control with them and wears it like a sharp cut suit, devastating and precise.

Eames is not that somebody. Never has been.

The first time he came up after going under -- the first time actually worth mentioning in any detail -- was a bloody trip and a half. The sheer electric thrill of having worn someone else’s skin -- shaped from nothing but air and thought and the power of his own sultry suggestion -- followed him up into the real world with a judder and snap, leaving him both kitten-weak and hard as fucking rock under the placket of his trousers, straining at the zip. His whole body cramped at the conflicting barrage of sensation, half-curling in on itself, his hand flopping uselessly against his thigh as he tried to muster enough co-ordination to press it up against his cock. A breath later he was coming, _hard_ , before he could even decide if he’d been trying to hold it off or urge it onward, and he writhed and gasped until the orgasm ran its course.

Eames was, admittedly, a tad disappointed no one had been around to witness it. He’d always fancied himself a bit of a shameless exhibitionist. Try anything once and all that. Judging from the way it’d felt, it was likely to have been pretty spectacular. Shame, really.

On the heels of that thought came the realization that such a reaction wasn’t exactly expedient to any future...job opportunities, as it were. Also a shame. It wasn’t a bad way to get off, all things considered. Granted, there was probably nothing like trying to make a quick exit with a hard cock conspicuously ruining the smartly tailored line of your trousers. Nothing good anyway.

So he learned how to rein it in, pare it down, until he could experience it with the precision of a finely honed blade, no more and no less than he allowed himself. Just enough to feel the deep lassitude that spread to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet, a heavy suggestion in the pit of his stomach, enough to steal his breath for an instant and jolt a brief, throbbing ache between his legs. All within the space of a blink, then packed away for contemplation at a later, more convenient time.

All of it just enough, so that those who might be looking could see the high flush in his face, the slight hitch in his breathing, and know it for what it was. Hard not to, with his legs spread wide around the barest shadow of a swell at his crotch, so much more explicit in its implicitness. He wasn’t of a mind to hide it, to deny himself his moment of satisfaction. That would just be too easy. He’s an artist, after all. It’s so much more gratifying to twist one’s weaknesses to one’s purpose, to come to know yourself well enough that the things beyond your control no longer impede you.

Limitations inciting innovation. Anticipation provoking performance.

It’s genius really.

 

||

 

The first time Eames meets Dominic Cobb, and thus by extension Arthur -- last name never given, of course -- he’s just come off a solo job out of California, and even with the state more than a week behind him he still feels loose and fluid, flushed with heat. Not even the persistent, wet chill of Vancouver in the beginning throes of a miserable November can seem to penetrate his dreamy fugue. For the equivalent of one week in the dreamscape he’d worn the skin of a long-limbed, sun-browned college co-ed named Deanna, she of the devastating fall of flaxen hair so idolized by one Profressor Eric Osbourne, mark. His own body still clung to the sense memory of that artificial self with greedy fingers, as if not yet finished appreciating its benefits.

It was clear from the start that drawing Osbourne out and getting the information he needed would take little effort at all, but Eames spun it out anyway, longer than maybe he should have, letting himself get lost a little in the patterns of a mundane, though nonetheless thoroughly manipulated, life. The Architect he’d pulled in at the last moment to draft the dreamscape had outdone himself even on short notice: creating great swathes of sun drenched lawn between the staid university buildings on which to drape himself, soaking up the liquid heat under the lusting eye of Professor Osbourne, who had an endless supply of excuses from which to draw for why he always seemed to come upon his favorite student in studious repose.

It was pure fluff, really. Eames couldn’t quite pin-point what it was about the job that made him linger like he did, but whatever the reason, the effects stayed with him all the way to the nondescript twentieth-floor suite of the Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Vancouver, sprawled in a chaise across from where Cobb sat at ease in his own chair and Arthur hovered behind, ruthlessly placid.

Still a little heat-stupid, feeling indolent with it, Eames mostly ignored Cobb through the entirety of his pitch, focused instead on the tight double Windsor knot of Arthur’s grey silk tie where it sat snug up against the column of his throat. Or, alternately, on how the exquisite fit of his single-breasted suit jacket defined a trim waist and the delicate sweep of his narrow hips.

 _Who is that marvelous creature?_

Cobb seemed to take his distraction with good grace, but put him rightly through his paces when Eames agreed to the offer he’d heard perhaps two words of all told. Without having to be asked, Arthur retrieved the suitcase lying on the single bed and began hooking Eames up to the machine inside, his long fingers working economically at the skin of his’ inner arm.

“I didn’t catch your name, gorgeous,” Eames murmured before Arthur could activate the device, playing stupid, because of course he’d latched onto it as soon as Cobb spoke it the first time, searing it onto the surface of his tongue so he’d never miss an opportunity to voice it. He was more interested in whether or not Arthur would give it up again a second time, this totem more intimate and precious than the ones that bound them to reality.

Arthur didn’t reply, at first. He stayed crouched over the device, the muscles of his back tensing and flexing. Then, with grudging deliberation, he twisted around and reached up, carded one hand through Eames’ gel-stiff hair. Utterly unexpected, he felt it like the scraping burn of a match being struck, igniting every single nerve in its path. Fingers curling, Arthur tugged his head close, putting his mouth up against Eames’ ear.

“Playing stupid right now is the absolute _worst choice_ , Mr. Eames. I expected better, frankly.”

Cobb turned to look at Arthur, hand paused over the line he'd been finishing securing to his own arm, but he didn't say a word. Eames felt his face break into a stupid, slightly poleaxed grin. _Ah yes_ , he thought, _this ought to be good_.

Then he was gone where Arthur would not follow, down into the black.

 

||

 

The very first time he enters the dreamscape under Arthur’s supervision, he makes a conscious choice to lower his guard. Not enough to be dangerous, risk getting lost inside his own head, but enough for what he wants. In the last few weeks, he’s come to want quite a lot of very specific things. He decides its time to see about getting some of those things.

The limited breadth of his architectural skill grants him a simple empty room in which to practice, one sturdy table on which to place a mirror. He spends the next hour shifting from one skin to another, keeping a careful eye for bearing, mannerism, posture, expression, all the things he rightfully needs to perfect. He’s only going to get one chance to do what he needs to do, and safely, and he wants to get it absolutely right. The anticipation of the payoff makes the room around him shudder and creak, and he knows its dangerous to think beyond the dream, makes it unstable and liable to collapse, but he can’t help it. For a moment, at least.

When the first lilting strains of music begin to whisper against his ear, he immediately brings himself back to centre, wiping the mental slate clean. It’s only then that he allows the picture he’s kept waiting just beyond the reach of perception to bloom outward in glorious, technicolour detail. As if they’d never been anything different, the rounder, lusher features of his face turn sharp and narrow, eyes going dark. The broad sweep of his shoulders disappears into the long, supple lines of a slender back, chest more compact but taut, efficiently defined. The clothes themselves are straight out of one of his dirtier fantasies, but no less true to life. He’s seen them before: a crisp Oxford buttoned up to the hollow of his throat, a field of starched white broken only by the vivid double strap of black braces, no tie.

There’s only a moment, just a moment to experience the reality of it -- _not real not real_ \-- before he has to let go, but it rings so true that he knows he’ll be shaking with it when the moment has passed. Not yet, though. For this single heartbeat of time he’s given himself he is only stillness, calm assurance and grace.

He’s wearing Arthur’s skin, after all, hemmed in by all the locks and measures and buttons and denial that make him who he is, make him so wonderfully good at what he does. Restrained, by choice and by deliberate action. Nothing has ever felt so exquisitely erotic.

And then it's gone.

He comes up from the dreamscape already dismantling all his normal protocols, letting the familiar sensation rush over him like he knows it will, opens his eyes to see Arthur turned away in profile, sitting straight and still in the chair beside him, both hands clenched over his knees. Eames drinks the vivid sight of him in, trying in vain to extend the illusion he’d so lovingly created. It doesn’t quite work, not like he’d hoped it would, but his cock swells to aching hardness all the same. No surprise there, and letting it happen just makes the gut-punch of lust that much stronger. He suddenly, viscerally _wants_ , becomes aware of it in the way of dreams, obvious but for how it’s only taken until now for him to realize the scope of it.

He sinks deeper into the lawn chair, legs falling open, and forces himself to speak past the cotton in his mouth. “Mmmm, Arthur?” The pitch strikes exactly where he’d planned it, echoes of sun drenched mornings, waking up aroused in a lover’s arms. Gravelly satisfaction and query both.

It’s only then that it becomes clear Arthur is deliberately ignoring him, head fixed in profile, gaze staring stonily into a sort of vague middle-distance. That won’t do, not at all. He’s always prided himself on his dogged persistence, insinuating himself neatly into any personal sphere, a presence that cannot be ignored unless he wants it so. Arthur should know that by now.

Eames plants a foot on either side of the chair and curls sinuously upward, plucking at the IV attached to his inner arm. He leans into Arthur’s space. The position pulls his trousers uncomfortably taut, and he groans softly at the back of his throat; he’s still so very, very hard. It’s worth it though, for the way he’s now at the perfect angle to dip his head closer and ponder the sweet arch of Arthur’s exposed nape. He smells superb up close, he always has, and Eames just has to breathe in, watches the tell-tale tic in Arthur’s jaw.

“Mmm, ignoring me, are we? Is this the new game?”

It isn’t, of course. He just knows how redundancy makes Arthur twitch, and asking again when they both know the answer is the fastest way to snap the rubber band. Having come to understand that so soon is, truthfully, one of Eames’ greatest disappointments. He’d allocated himself months to entirely suss out the full catalogue of places to push; having half of them at his disposal already is hardly any fun.

True to form, Arthur’s eyes cut sharply to the left, eyebrows raised. “Are you _done_?”

Eames offers him his best cheshire smile. “Not nearly.”

Arthur’s mouth twists into a voiceless snarl, and he begins packing away the device. “Well, I guess that’s just too bad, then, because I’m not _actually_ getting paid to sit here and indulge your massive ego, Eames.” He makes a slashing motion with his arm, adds an eloquent curl of his wrist that seems to encompass several things simultaneously: his erection, his smile, his person in its entirety.

Eames laughs out loud and rises fluidly to his feet. It puts him even closer to Arthur, waist level with the side of one perfectly molded cheek, and it's an opportunity much too perfect to squander. He places the heel of his hand lightly over the straining ridge of his cock, sighing at the renewed surge of desire that beats under his skin.

“Oh, you think this is for _you_? Not that I’d say no, of course, but _honestly_ Arthur...” He tuts softly. “If it’s ego we’re going to be arguing, that little assumption is more of a point in your column than in mine, my dear.”

Arthur snarls for real this time, twisting away. “Do me a favor and _fuck off_. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

If Eames had any shame whatsoever, he might have agreed. Fortunately, he did not. It was pleasing to learn that Arthur became a mouthy, nasty little shit when cornered, though. That hinted at other things, promising things.

“Oh, but if I went and did that we'd never get to see this conversation through to its natural conclusion," he tosses back.

"And what would that be?" Arthur asks, turning his head to look up at him.

Eames shifts a little closer, moves his body by incremental degrees. It's something he's begun to get very good at, the way he can change so much through so little. Now there's a charge in the air, a subtle threat to the way he's almost looming over Arthur, the way it would be nothing at all for him to cup the curve of his skull and just _pull_ , press him _down_ —

"You're a smart little cookie, Arthur. I'm sure you can figure it out."

Strangely enough, Arthur seems to actually be considering it, all of a sudden.

Eames has to take a moment to recalibrate. Surely it couldn’t be that easy? A lazy, artless proposition that he hadn’t even been all that serious about, already sensing the game to be lost? _That’s_ what it would take?

Arthur leans away, careful, then rises to stand facing Eames, both hands sliding casually into his side pockets. The corner of his mouth curls with slow precision, and there’s something happening behind his dark, narrowed eyes, something about the feel of his body in space that Eames can’t quite define. It makes the place furthest back in the corners and caverns of his mind twinge, like the point of a compass singing true north. He’s not sure what that means; is abruptly uncomfortable with the realization.

The heavy silence drags on, and then Arthur’s elegant shoulders lift in a shrug. “You know, I don’t think I really believe that. I don't think you're being honest with me at all.”

He sounds faintly bemused, almost bored.

Eames narrows his own eyes right back, his smile turning both mocking and contrite. “I assure you, if I haven’t been sufficiently explicit with regards to my desires I’m sure there are ways --”

Arthur shakes his head slowly. Eames feels his voice unceremoniously disappear.

“That’s not what I mean.”

With that as his maddening parting shot, he slides the suitcase off the desk and carries it away with him as he turns on his heel and strides off. Eames is left, for once, at a complete loss for words.

 

||

 

Things return to normal for a while -- for their particular definition of normal, anyway. Eames won’t say he’s cowed, merely regrouping. It’s not all that often that someone bests him at his own game, although even now he’s still not entirely sure that’s really what happened. There’s still layers and layers he has yet to unpack, and the verdict is long from being called in on their little tête-à-tête. One thing, however, is now very, very clear: he has Arthur’s attention, for all values of attention one can ascribe, in whatever doses Arthur decides.

Not that it all amounts to much, sadly. Arthur’s true, undivided attention has always had a certain _quality_ to it -- like being flayed alive -- and that doesn’t exactly change. What’s different is the way he turns it on Eames as though he’s already come to some sort of conclusion that Eames just doesn’t _get_ , as though he’s somehow being deliberately obtuse, trying every ounce of Arthur’s limited patience.

It’s all very irritating, for a while.

 

||

 

Until the day he _does_ get it, of course. He’ll wonder later just how it is that he can be so _stupid_ sometimes, _for god’s sake_.

 

||

 

It all starts off very innocently, as these sort of things often do. They spend an endless month running a string of jobs, jumping from one Architect to the next – because none of them ever seem to do things exactly the way Cobb wants – until they’re flush with cash but still very much missing that crucial member of their team. Cobb’s at loose ends and Arthur stops speaking to either of them. Things are a bit of a mess for a while.

Of course, just because Arthur’s stopped speaking doesn’t mean he’s also stopped _looking_. That’s still a...refreshing constant. Eames plays to that fact as little and as much as he feels like at any given moment, enjoying the strange give and take they seem to have settled into. He can’t predict how Arthur will respond any more, not after their last bizarre confrontation, and it’s a welcome change to feel that irritation, to have a problem to solve again.

Unsurprisingly, Cobb senses the tension between them and reacts in the exact way he always does when it’s someone else’s issues that need fixing: direct confrontation (for certain values of _direct_ ) followed by a tactical retreat. He sets them to practicing for a solid week while he swans off to find himself an Architect, leaving the two of them to each other’s company. As ever, Arthur’s raised brow at this pronouncement is the picture of eloquence.

Well. Waste not, want not, etcetera, etcetera.

He spends the first day yanking Arthur’s chain as he’s always done: standing too close, mouthing off little quips here and there, not even thinking about it all that strenuously. It’s a warm-up, and Arthur responds in kind, ignoring him with the kind of fierce concentration and style that Eames has to admire. Arthur says he isn’t an artist; Eames respectfully disagrees.

The next day he drops the act entirely. They do have work to do, after all. Arthur takes the change in tack at face value, without a blink, looking almost pleased, and they spend what Eames might call a pleasant afternoon playing cat-and-mouse in the dreamscape. Arthur is still quite bad at spotting him when he’s wearing another skin, despite Eames’ rather obvious predilection for blondes -- with the occasional narrow-hipped brunette to keep things fresh -- and Eames leads him on a merry chase, flexing his own mental muscles with a sort of childish exuberance.

Aside from that one shortcoming, which Eames knows is sure to be temporary, Arthur’s own talents are, to say the least, incredibly distracting. He refuses to be held accountable for the way the skin he’d spent the last five minutes perfecting just up and unravels as he watches Arthur methodically dispatch Eames’ projections one by one with a brilliant, satisfied grin, then empty the clip of his pistol with an errant flick of his wrist. There’s something so absurdly simple about the sudden feeling that jolts through him: wonder, sharp and clean like the sun reflecting off a field of ice.

Arthur reads him the riot act over it when they finally come up and it’s the first time he’s spoken out loud in weeks. Eames merely lounges back against his chair and enjoys the sound of Arthur’s voice running rampant over his already singing nerves, feels himself slowly getting hard. He thought it’d be old hat by now: come out of the dreamscape, get hard; look at Arthur, get hard; _think_ about Arthur, get hard. It isn’t though. It feels like the very first time, like the instant he’d caught sight of Arthur and thought, simply, _I want him_.

It doesn’t feel like a taunt, nothing brazen about the soft weight of it pushing insistently against the wool of his trousers. It’s not deliberate, not consciously. Everything about the moment feels gilded, warm, _safe_.

Arthur notices, of course. Eames would’ve been shocked if he didn’t.

The first few endless seconds after this seem to happen in slow motion. Arthur cuts off mid-word, eyes shuttering, and the dreamy quality to the space around them turns tenuous and charged. Eames watches Arthur’s mouth work, opening, closing, twisting. The expression on his face isn’t one he was expecting, not another iteration of the anger or irritation he’s seen so often before; rather, he looks simply overwhelmed, trembling on the edge of something he can’t quite control. It’s so foreign, a thrilling unknown quantity. It seems absurd that Eames can hardly breathe all of a sudden, but he _can’t_.

In the next span of seconds, several things happen all at once. Arthur lets out the shuddering breath Eames has been trying unsuccessfully to take. He moves his body in a liquid glide out of the seat of his chair to kneel slowly between Eames’ legs, resting back against his heels. With deliberate care, not a shred of hesitation, he reaches out and presses his hand over the crudely conspicuous swell of fabric Eames has made no effort to hide.

Whatever was calm, or easy about the desire he’d felt before is now gone. His whole body _surges_ against the near chaste touch, and Arthur’s whole face twists again, agonized.

“Is this what you want?”

The question is not meant for him, somehow, as though Arthur were asking it of himself. His voice is a shredded, throaty rasp struck through with the kind of steel that makes Eames just want to spread, to bare his neck, press up, up, _up_. He doesn’t have a single spare thought to even consider why he wants it, or better yet, why Arthur looks appalled, as though he’s already given away too much in that single rough query.

Arthur continues, begins to move his hand in a filthy grip and slide.

“How exactly were you planning on having this play out? Did you think you’d push me a little, wear me down? Is that what you thought you were going to do?”

He still sounds like he’s talking to no one but himself, the kind of rhetorical questions one asks of an animal too stupid to understand or answer back. Eames doesn’t try. He can hardly even reconcile the speed at which they’ve gotten to this place, how quickly things have spun into motion; his own motives are now patently irrelevant.

Arthur gives a ruthless twist, and the pleasure sparking across every nerve spikes to unbearable heights. He still has no breath with which to moan, or gasp. He can’t feel his hands. He’s never been so ready to come, _needed_ to come to badly, and yet felt that precipice to be so far away.

“Would you come, if I asked you to?” Arthur asks. Eames almost doesn’t understand the question, struck dumb by the look in Arthur’s eyes which tells him quite plainly that he won’t be _asking_. His entire body starts to tremble. He supposes that precipice really isn't so far away after all.

“Show me,” Arthur says, quiet again. Controlled. “Show me, Eames. Come for me. _Do it_.”

He does, instantly, soundlessly.

When he can open his eyes again, the whole world is blurred, unreal. It takes him several breaths to bring things into sharp focus, every inch of his body a sensitive, shaking wreck. He realizes his hands are clenched, one over Arthur's thigh, the other around the rusting metal frame of the lawn-chair; uncurling them now seems like a Herculean feat he has no hope of achieving.

They stare at each other in the almost thunderous silence. Eames feels blown open, ears ringing, too hot for the wool jacket now bunched up around his shoulders, twisted under his armpits. The front of his trousers has gone dark; he can see the ruined fabric between the splay of Arthur’s fingers where they’re still cupped and pressed around his twitching cock. Arthur’s eyes, that a heartbeat ago were focused with fiercely controlled intensity, now seem vague and distant, as if he’s retreated somewhere Eames could not hope to follow.

Eames starts to shift, for once utterly unsure of how to negotiate the next few moments with anything approaching grace, or whatever sly approximation he usually opts for. Arthur jack-knifes forward without warning, his still free hand pinning Eames back against the grungy lawn chair by the neck, grip going tight enough for Eames to feel the individual points of thumb and forefinger at each hinge of his jaw.

“Hold....still.”

It sounds like an afterthought, hardly more than a murmur.

Arthur’s gaze drops, his mouth turning soft and contemplative, and before Eames can fully appreciate the reality Arthur’s hand around his neck, the reality of the one still placed over his crotch makes itself known again. With a hushed _ungh_ of exhalation -- one only absently relinquished, Eames is barely lucid enough to realize -- Arthur presses his palm forward hard, rubbing in a slow, agonizing circle, fingers gently prodding and lifting the wet mess of his cock and balls through the soaked wool. Flushed and covered in his own come, it feels like an inspection, a focused assessment of just how thoroughly Arthur has succeeded in taking him apart. It makes him want to spread his thighs that much wider, curl his hips up, present. His cock’s half-hard again -- _still hard?_ \-- and he knows Arthur can feel it, turns his hand so the thumb pins him precisely and his fingers can curl down and under; one long digit flexing to drag along the back seam of his trousers where they’re stretched by the splay of his legs, a searing line down the crack of his ass.

Eames takes a moment to endure the stunning, white-hot flash of lust that arcs through him, eyes falling shut on a long, utterly ridiculous moan of surprised pleasure. The sound of it echoes wildly around the warehouse, pained and torturous, and Eames can feel the motion of Arthur’s hand jerk and hitch, as if to stop. Quite suddenly, he wants to laugh.

Even with his eyes closed, the picture of Arthur is seared onto the flash-spotted black behind them: still immaculately clothed, every drape and fold starched and in place, waist-coat buttons straining against the occasional up-down- _stop_ heave of his chest, the only concession to desire except for the delightfully obscene bulge at his crotch. Eames can practically hear the gears turning in his head, klaxons blaring, the instinct to smother, to stop, to...control beating up against Eames’ own unabashed release of restraint. It’s so marvelously perfect, like a discordant chord suddenly resolved. He always knew Arthur was nothing but a consummate professional, knew it from the start, from the first time he’d seen him come out of dream-state clamped shut like a bloody safe it would take ten tonnes of dynamite to crack; it’s so very satisfying to have his theories validated.

Pressing up into Arthur’s hand, he lets loose another rough moan, lips curling into his favorite smug grin.

“Oh, darling, do you _enjoy_ being such a cliché?”

Both of Arthur’s hands clench simultaneously, and Eames _writhes_.

“No more or less than you do, I’m guessing.”

Arthur’s eyes slide upward, face smoothly impassive except for the slightest crook at the corner of his beautifully mobile mouth. He watches Eames as if his own suspicions have been confirmed, and even through the encroaching haze of sheer want Eames feels the desire to laugh once again, delighted. Reaching forward, he drags one square thumb roughly over the trapped, straining line of Arthur’s cock.

He shudders. Eames can see him _letting himself_ do it, and nothing has ever felt more like a privilege.

He has to smile, to make sure Arthur _knows_.

“Oh, love, I’m so glad we finally understand one another.”


End file.
